Many in the media industry might tell you that digital and OTT services are disrupting the TV business, but as Michael Wolff points out in Television is the New Television it’s actually the other way around: “TV is disrupting the internet.”

So why do we all think it’s digital that’s the disruptor? Because we read it all over the internet and the internet is digital. Makes sense.

Let’s think about Netflix and Hulu for a minute. Digital would like to take credit for the emergence of these services because they’re delivered via IP, but they actually have more similar business models to HBO and Showtime: the subscription model.

Michael Wolff states, “other than being delivered IP, Netflix has almost nothing to do with the conventions of digital media – in a sense it rejected them. It is not user generated, it is not social, it is not bite-sized, it is not free.”

Netflix started out as a tangible movie rental business and because of demands in the changing marketplace, evolved into an online platform that also provides original content. Hulu used to be a free streaming online-only company that re-ran linear television programming, but soon realized that being free wasn’t a sustainable business model. Hulu is even more like linear television because the most commonly used version of the platform is ad supported – the model linear television created.